Blog Archives
Joker’s on You
Say one thing for Carl Chudyk, he’s always swinging for the fences. His latest, Chess Joker, is full of wonderful ideas. At its most basic: what if we took the game-altering jokers from Balatro, say half a thousand of them, and transformed Chess, that ancient game of strategy and discipline, into a cast-iron bathtub filled with jelly beans and marmalade and one or two razor blades just for fun.
At its best, Chess Joker lives up to that promise. The problem is that it isn’t often at its best.
The Wine-Dark Aegean Sea
I know Carl Chudyk can design a great game. That’s because he has. Many times. The Glory to Rome black box sells for like a bazillion dollars, and not only because it’s out of print. Innovation has fifty editions, all well deserved. And I still regard Impulse and Red7 as overlooked gems. Not because they’re overlooked, really. Because they don’t get the same attention as those first two I mentioned.
So it’s with no small degree of perplexment that I have struggled to understand Aegean Sea. The bones of a Chudyk game are there. You can line them up to make a proper skeleton. But once assembled, there’s no telling how this dinosaur was meant to function.
Two Minds About One Deck Dungeon
Today on Two Minds About…, Dan Thurot and Brock Poulsen are here to dissect the claim that One Deck Dungeon only contains one deck. Because it totally doesn’t.
Dan: You heard the invisible man. So what’s your take, Brock? One deck or not?
Brock: Is this one of those Zen kōans? Are we going to have some kind of pseudo-intellectual discussion, like when those people argued about whether you can shuffle a single card?
Dan: Well, can’t you? (faint whiffling noise) Never mind, let’s move on.
Uno Was Drunk, Fluxx Looked Great
The other day someone asked how I’d describe Red7, from designers Chris Cieslik and Carl Chudyk. That’s an easy one: imagine Uno and Fluxx got plastered and had a one night stand, and their illegitimate love child grew up surprisingly well-adjusted and clever, but never forgot its roots even as it transcended them.
That’s Red7. Yes, I’m basically a genius at similes.
Get Ready to Make an Impulse Purchase
“Impulse” doesn’t feel like a very good title for Impulse, the newest game by Carl Chudyk, whose previous games I didn’t play but probably will now that I’ve played Impulse. While I realize they’re going for the “driving force” definition, especially since the game’s impulse track is what enables all of your potential actions, “Impulse” makes it sound like a game about making snap decisions. And that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“So if you’re such a title genius,” you’re probably thinking, “what’s your title?” Well, yeah, I’ve got one. It’s perfect.
Space Deliberation.
Boom.
SPACE-BIFF! 